Karin Nansen

Organisation:

Friends of the Earth International

Karin Nansen, an environmental justice activist from Uruguay, co-founder of REDES Friends of the Earth. She is a member of the national coordination of the Native and Local Seeds Network, an initiative that involves more than 30 local groups from all over the country engaged in the recuperation, reproduction and exchange of local seeds varieties and agroecological small scale farming. She has also been working for many years with the Network of Rural Women Groups to assert the role of women as political actors in building Food Sovereignty. As member of REDES she was active in the National Campaign for the Human Right to Water, which led to a Constitutional Reform to stop water privatization and include this fundamental right in the Constitution, as well as to make mandatory the sustainable management of water in the territories. As part of REDES team on Food Sovereignty, she has been involved in the campaign against the expansion of agribusiness in Uruguay. Within the Seeds Network she has also been actively involved in the campaign for a National Policy on Agroecology. In December 2016 she became the Chair of the international environmental justice federation Friends of the Earth International.